What are the hardware requirements for a domain controller on a network with 40-50 clients? What are some recommendations? * I would like CPU speed, etc. Are company is currently finding a better means of managing a network enviroment for its clients. My question is instead of physically obtaining a clients MAC address onsite is there a command th

It is important, will be this machine a only one Active Directory machine or not. If yes I think these parameters should be OK: cpu.......2xP4 1Ghz (or higher) ram.......512 MB DDR (a minimum) Also, will there a terminal server for these clients? If yes, I think is a better idea to reduce Domain functions on 2 machines, one "primary" DC and another one - DC+ terminal Server (in Application mode)

It all depends what it is doing. If it is not a file server, not an application (like Exchange/SQL server), not a web server, well, ours is a 667 mhz single CPU PIII with 768 MB RAM and serves 30 users just fine with not only AD authentication, DNS, etc., but also some Exchange mailboxes, centralized anti-virus distribution, etc. The demands on a simple DC are not very great. You should have a minimum of 2 DCs and both GCs, IMO. If your only one goes down users may not be able to log into their workstations as well as a host of other problems. Peter

I might agree with the 512MB of RAM but there is no way a DC needs a dual processor. As the previous post has pointed out, the demands of a DC are minimal even in a much larger domain. I would not use a DC for file and print or mailboxes or anything else. I would have the DC be only a DC. You should have at least 2 DCs as was mentioned also because if one crashes, there is no way to get your domain information back unless you have a backup and even then it can be tedious. If you do not have the budget for two servers for DCs then using an older PC should work fine. My main DC is a server glass machine but it is only a PII 300MHz machine w/ 512 MB of RAM. I have approximately 1000 users in my domain but I do have several domain controllers. Don't over power your DCs. Save the power for file and print or application servers. Much better to have two smaller machines as DCs than one big one. Good luck.